


Anders, Ableism, And You: Don't

by Firelight_and_Rain



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Ableism, Canon Critique, Canon-Typical Fuckery, Fandom Critique, Fandom Meta - Freeform, Meta, Other, The Bastard Child of Dead Dove Do Not Eat And Discourse on Dead Dove Do Not Eat, wank
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-22
Updated: 2017-03-22
Packaged: 2018-10-09 03:51:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10403286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: Want something light-hearted, in-universe, or actual fic?This isn't the article for you!Don't like Anders in your fandom or find Anders stanning distressing?This also isn't the article for you!Interested in how shit manifests physically in the DA fandom and canon as regards a certain bipolar bisexual mage, or plan on writing him and haven't already been warned off by the above?This is the article for you!





	

**Author's Note:**

> CW: This is me telling the fandom at large what not to do, and discusses, at least vaguely; ableist abuse, dehumanization, homicide, and gaslighting, usually in regards to Anders. There is better meta out here on the subject than this, but this is easier for me to organize and monitor than a Tumblr post. I'm also (predictably ...) an Anders stan, and I mention the bombing in the meta while wishing death on Grand Cleric Elthina (civilly, har), and also state that I don't think every Anders-is-dead worldstate falls under the category of ableist fanning (although, I'll take this opportunity to state that negative Anders fan reactions to any harm to him are pretty well-justified and sometimes a necessary precaution considering ... everything that this Thing will sort of address).

I had a big intro to this, but I can just say instead; I went through some shit, played DA 2, had a great time externalizing all the ableism and queerphobia I’ve ever faced onto the Templars, and then went to enjoy my favorite DA 2 ship in the fandom on the high of my own interpretation of the game and … met a lot of Templar-logic (ableism) in what I figured was going to be, if not a safe space, at least one with the language to understand the horrors and various arguments in canon in light of a canonically mentally ill and queer character and a lot of ND coding.  
So here’s my personal 101 level anti-ableism course on how not to make someone who empathizes with Anders from irl reasons vomit in zir mouth.

\-->The Breakdown Of What Not To Do←

Gods Damn, The Tragedy Porn  
Now, I don’t really know how to say this without condemning “darkfic”, or telling other people how to process their negative emotions through art. So let me first off say that I’m not going to hunt you down and shit on your fandom birthday cake if you write ableist tropes. I’m not even going to vagueblog about you, not even primarily because right now the only “blogs” I have are this account and Facebook, and I’m already full up on alienating Facebook acquaintances with my posts about the U.S.A.’s political system and climate. But I’m going to continue to talk about the tropes, and I guess it’s up to you whether or not your story has another way of being not-ableist, or maybe it’s topical enough, or nuanced enough, or compassionate enough that you feel comfortable posting it with these tropes in it.  
Tragedy porn tropes: Anders dying, being made Tranquil, being imprisoned, turning into a demon and / or revenant, asking for death (and being obliged), being killed for what the author portrays as altruistic purposes while not posing an active threat to anybody (while, arguably, you could write this kind of thing to deliberately invoke a sense of moral dissonance, it doesn’t seem a large enough mass of DA fans see the fundamentally repulsive things about this), being killed by another character while doing something relatively innocuous, without said other character’s violence prompting a convincingly proportional reaction from his assigned lover in the story - sure, said lover will mourn, but Anders is treated more like a valued family heirloom than a person in this particular arc (or similar).  
The problem is not exactly with these tropes. The problem with tragedy porn is the attitude that someone’s emotional effect is more important than someone else’s life and autonomy. This is a fairly common structure for fiction, as much of the narrative revolves around the protagonist, and arguably inescapable in (English) fiction as I’m familiar with it, but the problem with applying this so superficially to a canonical or coded disabled character is that it’s echoing and supporting the dehumanization of actual, real life disabled people. Where a parent can expect sympathy for murdering their disabled children, because they were just such a burden. Where a love story centering around the death of the disabled partner is seen as enlightening rather than a tragedy - isn’t it just so grand, so unusual that she would get attached to him in the first place? And of course - the real tragedy here is the emotional effect on the abled partner, because disabled people apparently can’t hope for much in the first place. And all of this factors into real-life ableist abuse, because if our lives and autonomy aren’t in themselves sacrosanct but we are remarkable regardless for our unwitting ability to make those around us confront their own feelings, then whatever the feelings of those abled people, they justify action, because they’re just so overwhelming, see, and we’re just not that much ourselves outside of our relationship with our hypothetical abuser, see. And this can even complicate traumatic relationships between ill/disabled people - it can be hard to get support if your friends or family either have a low opinion of what you can expect in a partner, of what you can offer in a relationship - or if, should you seek support in the aftermath, you can expect the ableism that actively hurts you to be leveled against your abuser as your “support” and your own feelings and experiences to be trivialized in the conviction that ill / disabled people are one-dimensional in their condition.  
So - if you write Anders as a living burden on Hawke, spare a thought to the real-life MI people who might already feel like burdens on their friends andfamily and lovers, who might have already made an attempt on their own lives. If you write his heart-rending death, spare a thought to people who wake up every day fearing for their lives or who have a deep conviction that they’ll meet a bad end no matter what they do, having faced violence for their perceived faults and living with catastrophizing thought processes, or people who have already seen people like them dead, so that this isn’t some distantly artistic death scene or a shocking revelation, but the emotional equivalent of a cattle prod. If you write his “descent” in “monstrosity”, spare a thought to people who have far more to fear from the dehumanization of their emotions and thoughts than the vague spectre of literal monsters. Again, I’m not saying that you can’t ever write these tropes - after all, people in the situations I’ve just described may well want to parse them through fiction. But art doesn’t exist in a vacuum. So learn the trope so that you can use it appropriately.

2\. Revenge Porn  
The two opportunities to kill Anders, and the third heavily implied to drive him to doing it himself, not enough? Have no fear, the murder-knife is here!  
I’m not actually going to count Hawke (or potentially Aveline, Orsino or Meredith) executing Anders during the shame-crate scene as revenge porn, since it’s possible to play that scene as a lawful execution for multiple legally, technically unprovoked deaths completely separate from Anders’ identity and, har har, framing. Personally I think that Kirkwall’s rule of law isn’t worth two shits while the Annulement is on the table, and that Elthina was complicit in enough that she deserved to die and was never going to be legally prosecuted, and this scenario makes me very uncomfortable because a lot of the arguments for law and order in Kirkwall are in their own lore context uncomfortable-making, but I’m not going to put this scene under the category of toxic.  
But, yeah. Revenge porn - such as Sebastian or Fenris murdering Anders, which I’ve seen in fandom - continues to promote the idea that violence is an acceptable reaction to ill behavior encroaching into others’ space, and that an ill character is less of a loss than other people, and often includes a message about who is and isn’t an acceptable fan or even a real person to be considered as a potential audience - and fannish work often has very specific audiences, but when it comes to Anders, casual or “comedic” violence often isn’t prefaced and tagged. Maybe Anders is considered such an outlandish or overdone character that no one can really empathize with him … But we exist. And that attitude is so prevalent that it makes it hard for some of the people who most need it to get it, irl.

Part 3: The Humbling  
After most disagreements, most of us foster hopes of the other party apologizing on bended knee. We also like to imagine that they’d know better if they’d just experienced what we had. Which in this context leads to an awful lot of recontextualizing of Anders’ motives, since in canon he’s pretty explicit about them and has the perfect Survivor Resume to back up his claims, which are further confirmed by all the lore prior to some Inq. era retcons … not leaving any room for Anders to back down to whatever position the fan creator prefers.  
The easiest way to invalidate Anders’ position? Invalidate his life experiences. Most fan creators prefer to stay somewhat canon-compliant, so Anders is still right … except this time he did something to deserve it. Or his canon motives and peaceful work aren't important (though everyone else’s motives and emotional desire for instability still matter). But thankfully he comes to realize this! And this last psychological blow is cushioned by … Oh wait, I never really see fan creators giving the canonically suicidal character any emotional support? In a humbling arc it is important to never validate He Who is Wrong. Judgemental Advice and presence are apparently enough. Not like /that/ has any real life ableist parallels, either.  
I’ve seen this fairly often in shipping fics (Fenders, I’m looking at you). There are a lot of characters Anders needs to make a deep apology to … But if it starts like this, well, seeing any character entering a relationship with a completely destroyed sense of self isn’t one of my kinks in any fandom.  
And even if the fan creator changes canon to invalidate Anders’ position, I’m still going to be reading a character I relate to experience something like his canon experience with gaslighting. Seeing him stick to his convictions in the face of all of that in canon helps me deal with the ableist gaslighting I’ve experience in real life. No plot twist or character growth is worth reading Anders conclude that the gaslighting is right. It’s another bit of violence I don’t want to see validated. It’s not character development on its own; saying it is is another example of ableist abuse being “for our own good.” And having this process be imparted by an omniscient narration - at this point I’m already revisitibg my own gaslighting experiences, and this makes it feel inescapable. I already know that the canon is shitty, which is why fandom should be an opportunity to see fellow fans at least a little critical of ableism, at least a little willing to give weight to my experiences - if by proxy.  
And while the gaslighting is my main beef, to prioritize the more affeable characters’ sense of justification and comfort over the loud ND queer character’s “shit my people are dying” to the point of making like ability the price of admission for compassion really gets my goat, too. At that point I’d rather not encounter Anders in the fanwork.

P.S.  
Also, the spirits in Thedas read as hella autistic-coded, so Justice is a person and people don’t become corrupted and lose their humanity by changing. (Last I heard, even demons are just traumatized spirits often taken advantage of. Compassion and critical reading, people! It’s what transformative works can do!) Also the Anders rivalmance is abusive, and demonizing Justice (literally, har har) is just buying into the myth that oppressed people’s anger is inherently toxic and thanks to the game’s reactivity hurts both Anders and Justice in a way that Anders ends up /blaming himself/ for. (No, the friendmance objectively doesn’t have the same result - Anders isn’t goddamn actively suicidal at the end … and the toxicity of Justice mostly seems like that specific myth because in most situations, certainly ones where he’s not under massive stress, he’s quite inoffensive … After all, he’s very helpful and civil in Night Terrors regardless of his opinion of Hawke). ... ...

Also some tips for other Anders-positive fans with triggers regarding his portrayal: Never ever visit the TVTropes pages for DA 2 or its characters. I've had better luck with m!hawke x anders or anders x justice or anders x nathaniel howe or anders x warden than any other ships, while I've come across quite a bit of Tragedy Porn for f!hawke x anders and quite a bit of The Humbling for anders x fenris or anders x red!hawke - but there are always exceptions!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm well aware that Anders is fictional, problematic and that the canon and devs are rather shit.
> 
> (I've come to the conclusion that parts of my time in the Dragon Age fandom trying to parse trauma through Anders were wildly unhealthy for me and I often can't constructively engage with it (or, indeed, much of fandom culture, as BioWare is popular enough that there's considerable overlap) due to that, but I'm gonna keep this meta up and probably continue venting in the comments as an environment I can control much better than a Tumblr or a Discord chatroom. I've amended my previous statement, and anyone who wants to is now free to comment or otherwise engage).


End file.
